You’re quoting the Bible in your book and many of the verses use LORD in small caps. But you don’t know how to get those little capitals so you type LORD in your manuscript. Or maybe you missed the fact completely that Lord was in all caps. I see that often in the nonfiction manuscripts I edit….
You’re writing your story in multiple point of view. How do you keep track of how many scenes you have in each POV? Your story has a specific time frame. How do you track your scenes to ensure you follow that timeline? Maybe your story takes place in 5 different cities. How can you ensure…
For the indie author, correctly formatting the elements of your manuscript, such as a page break, is essential (unless of course you pay someone else to do it). If you’re seeking traditional publication, all publishers have submission guidelines. Those guidelines often include such items as what font to use (e.g. Times New Roman), what font…
Making Scrivener work for you—rather than the other way around—can start with customizing your toolbars. Scrivener offers a lot of tools to make things easy. As you discover them, you’ll want the ones you use most, on your toolbar for easy access. Last time we were talking about snapshots and I promised to tell…
In my pre-Scrivener days of writing, I used MS Word. It got the job done, but when it was time to revise I got paranoid. What if I didn’t like all the changes I had just made? What if I liked most of them, but not all? What if deleted an entire scene, then two…
Scenes are the building blocks of your story. So let’s take a quick look at the definition of a scene. Jack M. Bickham, in his book Scene & Structure, defines scene this way: It’s a segment of story action, written moment-by-moment, without summary, presented onstage in the story “now.” James Scott Bells says in Plot…
As writers, we all know how important it is to make our story as strong as possible. We also know that we each have our specific weaknesses in writing. Maybe for you that weakness is grammar, or spelling, or passive voice. Maybe you are too wordy. Today, I’m going to show you how to use…
Every writer has words she or he uses too often. I call them crutch words. Words like “well, smiled, laughed, however, tears, cried” etc., in addition to adverb usage. These words aren’t easily spotted when you revise simply because you’re looking at other things like character and plot development. So today I’m going to show…